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Shaurya Malwa:
The team behind the Trump memecoin said Thursday that the top 220 holders on its list, where the smallest wallet holds $420 worth of TRUMP, are eligible to win dinner with President Donald Trump, contrary to rumors that a six-figure token stash was required.
“We want to clarify a few things people seem confused by on X and in the Media,” the team’s X account posted. “You need $300K+ to participate (You Don't); That we're unlocking into this competition (We're Not).” TRUMP surged 70% this week, trading at around $12 as of Thursday, mainly driven by hype around the so-called “Dinner with Trump” event, according to CoinDesk’s earlier reporting. Some users on X claimed that only holders with more than $300,000 in tokens could participate. Others speculated that the wallet ranked 220 on a blockchain explorer was the minimum cutoff. The team dismissed both claims, stating that users must register via the official leaderboard and that only time-weighted holdings during the competition will count.
Currently, the leaderboard's top wallet, under the pseudonym “Sun,” holds over 1.1 million TRUMP tokens, worth nearly $14 million. The 220th spot was held by “HAR,” with just 35.3 TRUMP tokens, or about $420 in dollar terms.
Twenty five wallets are listed as VIPs on the leaderboard, where the cut-off holder sits on over $400,000 worth of TRUMP.
The team also addressed concerns about token unlocks affecting the leaderboard, stating that both the cliff unlock and subsequent daily unlocks would remain inaccessible for 90 days, outlasting the competition itself.
“We want to say again that the tokens from the initial cliff unlock and the following 3 months of daily unlocks will remain locked, each for an additional 90 days,” it said.
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ARK Predicts $2.4M Bitcoin By 2030 |
James Van Straten: ARK Invest raised its decade-end bitcoin (BTC) price target to as high as $2.4 million apiece after revising its assumptions on active supply, which excludes lost or long-held coins. The largest cryptocurrency by market value was recently trading around $94,000.
The bull-projection figure, 60% more than its January 2024 estimate, reflects a 72% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from last December through the end of 2030. The base case estimates a BTC price of $1.2 million — a 53% CAGR — while the bear case projects $500,000, equating to a 32% CAGR. David Puell, an analyst at the Cathie Wood-led investment company, used a model based on total addressable market and projected market penetration across several sectors. These include institutional investment, bitcoin’s role as "digital gold," its use as a haven in emerging markets, adoption for nation-state and corporate treasury holdings and on-chain financial services built on the bitcoin network. In November last year, Puell targeted $104,000-$124,000 by year-end. Bitcoin ended December at $93,440 en route to hitting a record high of $109,000 in January before slumping to lows around $74,500 earlier this month. The rally since then is partly driven by declining exchange balances, which indicate that more BTC is being withdrawn into private wallets, a sign of long-term holding behavior. According to Glassnode data, exchange-held BTC has fallen from approximately 3 million in November 2024 to 2.6 million, reinforcing the growing bullish sentiment around the cryptocurrency. |
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Saylor Says IBIT Will Be Biggest ETF |
James Van Straten: U.S. spot bitcoin (BTC) ETFs have recorded approximately $2.8 billion in net inflows over the past five trading days, contributing to driving the price of bitcoin higher from around $85,000 to $94,000. The iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) has accounted for $1.3 billion of these inflows alone.
Michael Saylor, Chairman of the largest listed bitcoin holder Strategy (MSTR), stated that "IBIT will be the biggest ETF in the world in ten years." Saylor made the comments at the Bitcoin Standard Corporation’s Investor Day. To put this into perspective, IBIT currently has a market capitalization of $54 billion and on Thursday over $1.5 billion in volume. In comparison, the largest ETF by market cap, the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (VOO), boasts a market capitalization of $593.5 billion, more than ten times that of IBIT. Eric Balchunas, Senior ETF Analyst at Bloomberg, acknowledged the possibility of IBIT becoming the largest ETF, though he emphasized that it would be extraordinary. “It’s possible, especially if IBIT starts taking in more cash than VOO, but that would require inflows well north of $1 billion a day—more likely in the range of $3 to $4 billion daily, to gain ground. In short, some extraordinary things would have to happen, but it’s possible,” Balchunas noted. Meanwhile, the annualized basis trade for bitcoin ETFs, investors going long the ETF and short the CME bitcoin futures, has risen to nearly 10%, up from 5% in early April. This increase, coupled with a 2,000 BTC rise in futures open interest over the past week, suggests that a portion of the net ETF inflows may not be purely directional bets, but part of the basis trade. |
STX Stacking Volume This Week |
Omkar Godbole:
STX, the native token of Bitcoin layer-2 protocol Stacks, has surged 56% in seven days to become the week's best-performing of the 100 biggest cryptocurrencies amid hopes for institutional adoption. The token hit a two-month high of 92 cents on Friday after gaining more than 21% in the past 24 hours to become the day's biggest advancer, according to CoinDesk data. Stacks is the world's leading layer 2 for running smart contracts and decentralized applications on the Bitcoin blockchain. On Tuesday, BitGo, the digital asset custody and infrastructure provider and a backer of the wrapped bitcoin (WBTC) token, opened the door for its customers explore yield-generating opportunities on Stacks by integrating sBTC, a synthetic derivative that represents bitcoin (BTC) in a 1:1 ratio on the Stacks blockchain. “SBTC opens the door to programmable, decentralized financial products without compromising Bitcoin’s core principles — and we’re just getting started," said Abishek Singh, a product manager at BitGo. "With over $3 trillion in processed transactions and more than $48 billion in staked assets, BitGo is uniquely positioned to help institutions tap into this new era of Bitcoin utility."
STX plays several roles in the Stacks ecosystem, including enabling connection between the parent blockchain and Bitcoin, supporting smart-contract creation and enabling network governance. It's also used to pay transaction fees and plays a key role in the proof-of-transfer consensus mechanism that allows holders to earn BTC by locking their STX.
The sBTC token allows holders to participate in Stacks' DeFi ecosystem while keeping the price peg to their underlying bitcoin. The sBTC withdrawal facility, expected to be implemented April 30, will allow institutions to move seamlessly between BTC and sBTC, opening doors for creating new applications encompassing Stacks' smart contract features and Bitcoin's security. Liquidity in the Stacks-based decentralized finance ecosystem is improving, the protocol announced on X early Friday, pointing to an over 400% surge in the stablecoin supply in the first quarter, the third-largest behind Morph and Cronos.
The total stablecoin supply in the ecosystem was nearly $7 million, up from around $1 million in early January, according to data source DefiLlama. |
Interview: MoonPay's Ivan Soto-Wright |
Interview by Will Canny. Ivan Soto-Wright is speaking on the main stage at Consensus 2025, in Toronto on May 15.
As the crypto space consolidates, MoonPay is quietly becoming the infrastructure layer for the next wave of Web3.
With over 30 million verified users across 160 countries and a fully licensed global stack, the company is enabling everything from fiat onramps to embedded DeFi experiences. Originally launched to make wallet top-ups seamless via Apple Pay and debit cards, MoonPay now powers API-first solutions used by nearly every major DeFi app. “We started with a simple question, how do you top up your wallet?” MoonPay's CEO and co-founder Ivan Soto-Wright told CoinDesk in an interview. Now it’s about giving developers the tools to bring crypto into everyday life. The company is pushing toward a fully API-driven, "headless" infrastructure model, where developers can plug MoonPay into their products just like Stripe.
Helio, one of MoonPay’s recent acquisitions, underscores this trajectory. Moonpay acquired the Solana-powered crypto payment processor in January, for a reported $175 million.
Despite its size and reach, MoonPay still operates with a startup mentality. With only 300 employees, the team is "execution-first" and relentlessly focused on efficiency. The company saw 112% year-on-year growth, with Q1 2025 marking its strongest quarter ever.
MoonPay primarily earns via transaction fees on crypto purchases through debit cards, Venmo, and Apple Pay. But it’s experimenting with zero-fee trading products like “Balance,” which allows users to deposit cash and trade instantly.
Prior to MoonPay, Soto-Wright was CEO and co-founder of smart money app Saveable. He started his career at London-based investment firm Redington.
CoinDesk: What trends do you see emerging in crypto? “DEXs will overtake CEXs, with users demanding control over their assets but expecting the smooth UX of a centralized platform."
"MoonPay’s ethos is that more crypto transactions should be peer-to-peer, taking advantage of decentralized exchanges. We’re seeing a general shift from CeFi to DeFi, with decentralized exchanges currently dominating 30% of the market. I see this trend continuing to shift over time – DeFi is global and ultimately reduces friction and costs by cutting out the middleman.” How do you expect the wallet market to develop? “Cryptocurrency wallets will eventually replace bank accounts. Users will have multiple wallets, like you and I have a number of bank accounts now. MoonPay provides the mission-critical infrastructure to power these wallet experiences, both from our MoonPay Widget product and APIs.”
Does MoonPay plan to make more acquisitions in the near term? “M&A is a huge growth driver to our business. We view it as an accelerator to help us move quickly and bring more products to market. A big part of our M&A strategy is identifying the right companies to help achieve our vision for the future of payments. An example of this is Helio, which unlocked our ability to power crypto commerce for merchants."
“We’re always open to M&A,” Soto-Wright said, noting that past acquisitions have been cash-flow positive from day one. “It’s about speed, scaling by acquiring great teams with a sharp founder mindset.”
What features do customers want, better UX?
A central theme for MoonPay is the shift from custodial to non-custodial finance. “We believe crypto should be non-custodial first,” said the company's CEO.
To facilitate this shift, MoonPay is developing what it calls the “CEX experience in a DeFi environment.” That means abstracting away the complexity of DeFi —wallets, UTXOs, compliance — into easy-to-integrate SDKs and widgets. “Think of it like packaging up the convenience of a centralized exchange and putting it into your own wallet.”
What does the future have in store for MoonPay? While not yet confirmed, a MoonPay stablecoin could be in the pipeline. “We’re taking our time, but you can see the early signs in Balance. Eventually, there could be a stablecoin.” |
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The Industry’s Brightest Minds. One Unmissable Event.
Dealmaking. Networking. Big moves. Consensus 2025 is where the industry’s top players connect, innovate, and build what’s next. Don’t miss out. Save 15% with code NODE15. |
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